Families of victims of the Hillsborough tragedy now have no way of seeing justice done on the police who wronged them, because all those officers are now retired.

And the only solid thing to come out of decades of investigations – the Hillsborough Law – is so toothless it turns a duty of candour into a polite suggestion.

Here’s The Guardian:

“The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found that 12 police officers, most of them senior, would have faced disciplinary cases of gross misconduct if they were still serving.

“However, no former officer will face disciplinary proceedings because they have all retired. Some, including Peter Wright, the chief constable of South Yorkshire police at the time of the disaster, have died.

“Ten of the men whom the IOPC said would have faced gross misconduct cases were in the South Yorkshire force, including senior officers responsible for safety at Hillsborough. The IOPC listed six gross misconduct allegations against Wright, including for seeking to minimise the force’s responsibility and deflect blame on to the victims, Liverpool football club supporters.

“Two other men were senior officers in West Midlands police, which was appointed to investigate the South Yorkshire force after the disaster. Mervyn Jones and Michael Foster would have faced allegations that they “failed to investigate effectively” and were “biased against supporters in favour of South Yorkshire police”.

“The IOPC said in the report that it had found 110 complaints upheld or cases to answer against former officers, including for “falsehood and prevarication”, “discreditable conduct”, “abuse of authority” and “neglect of duty”.

“Some people whose relatives died at Hillsborough told the Guardian they welcomed the findings, but were outraged that the IOPC did not find more cases to answer against South Yorkshire police officers for falsely blaming Liverpool supporters.

“The IOPC has explained its view that in the absence of a duty of candour to positively assist an investigation, in 1989 the South Yorkshire force and its officers were not breaking the law or conduct rules by “presenting their best case” about the causes of the disaster, even though it involved withholding crucial information and amending hundreds of officers’ statements.

“The jury at the second inquests into the disaster found in April 2016 a series of failings by South Yorkshire police, and that the victims were unlawfully killed owing to gross negligence manslaughter by the officer in command, Ch Supt David Duckenfield. The jury also determined that no behaviour by Liverpool supporters contributed to the disaster.

“Duckenfield was then acquitted in a criminal prosecution in 2019. No police officer has been convicted of any criminal offences in relation to the Hillsborough failings, and none faced disciplinary proceedings at the time they were serving.

“After Operation Resolve, an investigation overseen by the IOPC into how the disaster happened, the watchdog has found Duckenfield would have faced 10 gross misconduct cases, including for his notorious lie that Liverpool supporters had forced open an exit gate to gain entry to the stadium. In fact Duckenfield had ordered the wide gate to be opened, to relieve serious congestion outside the ground.

“Supt Roger Marshall and Supt Bernard Murray, who had senior crowd safety roles, would also have faced gross misconduct cases, the IOPC said, as would the then South Yorkshire police assistant chief constable Walter Jackson. He was off duty but on call, and was at the match; the allegation against him was that: “ACC Jackson failed to organise and direct junior-ranking police officers to help save lives … ACC Jackson failed to take control of the disaster.”

“Sir Norman Bettison, who was a chief inspector at South Yorkshire police and later became chief constable of Merseyside police, would have faced allegations that he “provided misleading and inaccurate press statements” which minimised his role at South Yorkshire police after the disaster, and was “deliberately dishonest about his involvement in the disaster” when he applied for the Merseyside position. The Liverpool MP Ian Byrne has written to the Cabinet Office calling for Bettison to be stripped of his knighthood.

“A mounted police officer, PC David Scott, would have faced the allegation that he lied when he said that his horse had been burned by Liverpool supporters.”

The South Yorkshire Police Federation has criticised the IOPC report as “not fair or balanced”, saying: “Former police officers – some of whom are very elderly and some who have sadly passed away – do not have any kind of due process or the ability to formally respond to the allegations made in this report.”

This is because the law has protected them for far too long, it seems.

Hillsborough is the most extreme example of police avoiding disciplinary procedures because they have retired or passed away – because of the scale of the injustice and the length of time the families have had to fight.

Please take a moment to complete the Vox Political Reader Survey.
Your answers are anonymous and will help shape future coverage.
Click here to take part.

The underlying mechanism is depressingly familiar – as a reporter, I’ve seen it multiple times in the past: misconduct becomes unenforceable once an officer retires, and criminal thresholds are set so high that gross negligence, cover-ups and institutional deceit routinely escape consequence.

There are three obvious structural solutions, none of which require inventing anything new — only political courage and legislative will.

First: misconduct jurisdiction must survive retirement.

There is absolutely no reason disciplinary proceedings should evaporate the moment an officer hangs up the uniform.

Doctors, lawyers, teachers and social workers can all face disciplinary action long after they leave their professions; they can lose registrations, titles, pensions or the right to practise again.

The police are virtually unique in enjoying a total cut-off point.

Ending that protection would at least allow formal findings of misconduct, even if sanctions are limited.

Second: pension forfeiture must be on the table for proven misconduct related to public harm.

Senior officers who oversaw catastrophic failure — or participated in cover-ups — should not simply retire on full, publicly-funded pensions.

Parliament already allows pension forfeiture in very narrow circumstances (serious criminal convictions connected with duty).

That could be widened to include gross misconduct proved in a disciplinary process or civil standard hearing.

For elderly or deceased officers, this may be symbolic — but symbols matter.

It would shatter the culture of impunity that shielded the Hillsborough cover-up for decades.

Third: statutory duties of candour need teeth.

The Guardian article said that “Bereaved families have campaigned since 2017 for a “Hillsborough law”, which was finally introduced into parliament by Keir Starmer’s government in September, aimed at deterring official cover-ups by introducing a duty of “candour, transparency and frankness” for police officers and public officials.”

It neglects to mention that this duty is only activated during inquiries, inquests or investigations – so in day-to-day life, public servants like the police remain merely urged to do the right thing.

A duty without sanctions is just a polite suggestion.

A proper such duty would be backed by real penalties: obstruction offences, career-ending sanctions, and personal liability for deceit in official processes.

If such a duty had existed in 1989, South Yorkshire police’s entire defensive strategy — amending statements, smearing supporters, withholding facts — would have been a prosecutable offence, not just a moral outrage.

The heartbreaking thing about Hillsborough is that any mechanism that could have delivered justice either did not exist, or existed in such a neutered form that officers could simply wait out the clock until retirement protected them.

The families were right to call this a “bitter injustice”: it is accountability defeated by time itself.

The solution is straightforward: stop letting time be a shield. Misconduct should follow an officer as long as the consequences of their actions follow the victims — which, in Hillsborough’s case, has been a lifetime.

If anything, this latest report shows that the loophole is not merely a historical glitch — it remains an active threat unless the law is changed decisively.

The Hillsborough families now have no chance of seeing justice done on the police who wronged them.

there is now no realistic path to achieving it.

Every legal route is now closed:

• Criminal prosecutions failed years ago. Duckenfield was acquitted. No other senior officer was ever charged.
• Misconduct proceedings cannot happen because every officer identified by the IOPC has retired, and the law simply does not permit disciplinary action against former officers.
• Civil action is practically impossible because key individuals have died and evidence is now decades old.
• The new Hillsborough Law is not retrospective. It can prevent future cover-ups but cannot reopen or re-punish past ones.

The IOPC report explicitly confirms this grim reality: the watchdog identified gross misconduct on a huge scale — deliberate dishonesty, abuse of authority, neglect of duty, falsification of statements — but it cannot sanction any of the perpetrators because of the retirement loophole. Families described this as “a bitter injustice” because it is exactly that.

The truth is now officially recognised.

But accountability has been permanently denied.

And that is why the families’ reaction is as raw and furious as it has been: they were forced to fight for the truth, for 36 years – only to be told — at the very end — that those responsible will face no consequences at all.